Janna's Jerusalem Journies: Jerusalem's Gems-Part 2

We've seen A LOT in Jerusalem this year, but it seems like there is always something new to discover!

New Old City Discoveries

Remember our friends George and Barbara from Germany? I mentioned them in quite a few of my Germany blogs. They got to come visit us at the end of May, just before Holly's visit. They were only here for about 3 days, so they had to squeeze in as much as they could. This meant we went to the old city every day. We showed them the major sites, like the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock. But we also discovered some new places with them, so that was nice.

We were looking for Saint Anne's church and on the way discovered two small churches and what they think was Jesus' prison. It certainly looked like a prison. It was underground, small, dark, damp, and no natural light.

Prison of Christ

One of the rooms in the prison

We're in Jesus' cell

Saint Anne's Church is very significant. First, it is thought to be the birthplace of Jesus' mother Mary. Second, it's the area thought to be where Jesus told the paralyzed man to "stand up, take your mat and walk!" Thus they built a healing center with a water cistern, baths and grottoes. It is also known for its acoustics and echo. We happened to be in there when a tour group was singing. It did sound amazing!

In the 19th century the church was given to France who restored it and began the first excavations revealing the dikes, pools, Byzantine Basilica and the baths of the healing place. It was very interesting, we got to walk throughout the pools and ruins. Mary's birthplace cave is underneath the church, so we checked that out too. It's just a cave like everything else!

St Anne's church

Inside of St Anne's church

Mary's birthplace cave

Basilica ruins

Cistern

Me, Barbara and George at the pool ruins

Pool ruins

Skye looking into pool ruins

George, Skye, me, Barbara at the pool ruins

Someone told us about going underneath the old city through the tunnels, specifically under the Western Wall. It had to be scheduled ahead of time, so we reserved a spot and went on the tour. Katherine joined us for this one!

Our tour guide was an American Jew who lives here now, so he was very nice, well spoken and well informed. We started in a room with this spiffy model of the old city area. It first started out as a mountain, then he kept adding chunks to show us how the old city developed, mainly the Temple Mount.

Next he took us through the arches to the start of the tunnel, and we stopped at another model of the Temple Mount. This was cool because it lit up and showed exactly where we would be walking underneath. It really helped us picture it and helped give us a good sense of direction. Then we were off through the tunnels. We were right up against the Western Wall and we stopped to talk about the stones. The original stones were HUGE on the bottom, it looked like a bunch of cement with smaller stones built onto them. But, nope, that's wrong, it was one huge 15 or so meter wide stone! Impressive!

It was very cool to walk along the original stones of the original wall of the Temple Mount. It's one of the few things in the old city that is actually original, and fact. It was the first time I had ever "felt close to bible times and the Holy Lands" as so many pilgrims feel as they see the Sepulcher or Via Dolorosa. I have felt nothing but frustration and skepticism at those sites! So that was a nice feeling. We kept walking and eventually we hit an area where Jewish women go to pray. It's the closest physical place to the Holy of Holies on the Temple Mount. Next we passed the entrance gate to the Temple Mount and were standing on what used to be the street into the temple. Amazing! There were some random huge stones there that clearly were cut stone, but no one can figure out why exactly they were there, possibly something was unfinished. There was even a pillar in the stone wall. The tour guide painted a picture in our minds of what it could have been like when people used that street regularly, and that perhaps that pillar was once a little shop where the Jews bought their sacrificial animals. It was really cool and very easy to imagine it.

Finally we got to the end of the tour where there was a water channel that they think originally supplied water to the Temple Mount. Our tour guide gave us some concluding information then sang a Jewish song with us (most everyone knew it but us). It was such a good tour! I highly recommend it!

First room in the tunnels with the Temple Mount model

The other Temple Mount model, see the lit up part? That's where we were!

Our tour guide in front of the giant stone

Barbara in the tunnels (Western Wall to the right)

Random stones on the road

Pillar

Barbara, Katherine, Skye in the tunnels

The ladies! Katherine, Barbara and me

Our whole crew in the tunnels!
(from left: Katherine, Barbara, me, George, Skye)

Temple water channel

Jerusalem Biblical Zoo

A few months ago Skye, David and Dan took a boys trip to the Jerusalem Biblical zoo, so, obviously, I didn't go along. However, I love zoos so I made sure to go with Holly when she was here, another thing in Jerusalem that neither of us had done before. It's rather annoying to get to, it's pretty far outside Jerusalem, but once you get there it's so nice! They say it's a biblical zoo, with all the animals mentioned in the bible. Maybe that's sort of true, some of the plaques had verses mentioning the animal (or the animal it could have possibly been) on them, but really, it was just a normal zoo. The gift shop was a Noah's Ark and that was fun. But still, more of a normal zoo. They had some cool animals though! Giraffes (my personal favorite), elephants (my next favorite), rhinos, hippos, lions, tigers, bears, typical zoo animals. It was also very clean and well kept. It was quiet that day and a rather nice escape from busy Jerusalem life, especially with all the green and trees around. We had a nice afternoon and no mishaps getting there or back.

Chimp, I think...or some sort of monkey!

Lion!

Leopard

Elephant! What a cutie!

Giraffe and Zebras

Jerusalem Light Show

Every year Jerusalem has a cool light show in the old city. It usually lasts about a week and goes from 8pm to midnight. Katherine, David, Skye and I decided to check it out. They have maps with different colored paths and you just follow one, and usually it leads you to the next one. On the paths you hit different light displays. Each path has a long string of the colored lights leading you along it, so it's very easy to follow. We took the green path first which is mostly along the outside of the city walls. There were different displays done by artists so every aspect of it represented something. Then, at the end of the green line we went into the depths of Zedekiah's cave, or Solomon's Quarries. It is a 5 acre quarry underneath the muslim quarter of the old city. We had passed by it before never realizing exactly what it was. There is also a charge to get in, but during the light show it was free. We walked pretty far in (though it went further) to this huge ball with silver decor on the outside with a moving light inside making shapes on the cave walls. It was pretty cool. It was also just cool to be able to go inside the cave.

We left the cave and made our way to the blue path that took us through the middle of the old city. It was so crowded that it was like a traffic jam and it took forever to get through. That was pretty frustrating, but we finally got to the good part. This whole indoor walk way had projected shapes on it, all over the ceiling and walls, and it was constantly changing. It was really cool. Then we made our way out of the old city catching a few other displays on the way. It's a cool idea, and the Israelis tried to be organized about it, but in the end it was chaotic. Still fun though!

First thing we saw at the light show

This was cool, different shapes kept popping up

I'm not really sure what this one was supposed to be.

These are watering cans!

Musical one! It was cool, you could go strum the guitars.
It wasn't working right (Israel...), but a cool idea.

Damascus Gate! Awesome!

David and Skye at Damascus Gate

Zedekiah's cave

The silver light ball thing in Zedekiah's cave

Giant (and extremely creepy) dancing doll thing

Church of the Redeemer's rainbow

Light hall on the blue path

Katherine and I at the light hall

More changing shapes in the light hall

And more...

These were so cute! Flowers at the Jaffa gate entrance

Knesset

Katherine and I had been planning to tour the Knesset and check out the nearby monastery but other things just kept coming up and making us busy. Finally we planned a date day to go check them out and do a little shopping afterward.

The Knesset tours are Thursdays and Sundays at 8:30am in English, so we started first thing in the morning. The Knesset is only about a 15 minute walk from our neighborhood (the view from our balcony is of the Knesset). We thought we were the only ones in the tour until a ton of people with kids joined us. But that's ok, they were American, and American kids are much better behaved than Israeli kids! We started with some information about how it was built, when, and the surrounding neighborhoods, he told us some fun facts about Nachlaot (our neighborhood)! Then we watched an interesting short movie about the Knesset and Israel's political history. Some very outright anti-palestine things were said which was a bit uncomfortable, and then we noticed they have an Arabic version and we figured they have a different movie for them. Strange.

Anyways, we moved on and saw some really cool tapestries and mosaics made just for the Knesset and Israel. Then we got to go inside the Knesset Chamber, where all the members meet to discuss the issues. It was obviously built in the 60s! Everything was very brown! My favorite fact about the room: the president's (who doesn't actually do much, the prime minister does everything) seating area was off to the side. Originally they were going to build it in front next to the speaker's seat. But presidents tend to be older having already served in the government for years, so they built it off to the side in case the president wanted to fall asleep. hahaha.

Knesset

Cool doors

Good morning, Knesset!

Tapestries representing Israel's past, present and future

Katherine and I in front of the tapestries (also the ceremony room)

Wall mosaic representing Israel

Sleeping president Katherine's section

Knesset chambers...seating in the shape of a menorah

Knesset picture....take 10 (this was about our 10th attempt at this pic)

Monastery of the Cross

Next we headed through the park and to the Monastery of the Cross. It was closed. Boo! We went back a couple days later when it was open. It's really big! It's named "The Monastery of the Cross" because they believe that this was the area where they cut down the tree that was the cross Jesus carried. It was started by Georgians, but they think the complex was originally built by good ole St Helena.

First we went into the museum area that had old Georgian artifacts like shutters, maps and other various things. Then we went into the chapel part, it was beautiful! The museum part was stone and dirt and very run down, so I wasn't expecting it to be so pretty. The pillars and altars were painted and the floors were mosaic. It was really cool. Even the posts blocking off the altar were very ornate. There is a side room next to the altar with some really cool interesting paintings. At first I thought they were the stations of the cross, but after a closer look they seemed to be representing when Jesus carried the cross and related events.

We explored a little more and found our way into the kitchen area. We saw a giant kettle in the middle of the room, and then I looked up and saw a bat skeleton. Eww. Once I got over that, we checked out the other part of the kitchen that had a brick oven and an area for a cauldron and some other nooks in the stone wall. Then we went into the dining room. It had a huge long marble table with little cut outs for each chair. It was beautiful! It was also dusty and looked a little like they were renovating, but nothing looked like it was under construction. That was odd, and there was very little information about the monastery posted. Some of it looked very new and modern, like modern faucets and tile, and some looked extremely old. We took some fun pictures and headed out.

After the Monastery (on date day, when it was closed) we headed to the shuk for some pictures with my favorite vendors and to buy some cute scarves and fun sunglasses. We may or may not have also gotten some homemade french ice cream, that may or may not (it was) have been extremely delicious.

There are so many cool things to explore in Jerusalem! It has been really fun enjoying it all with friends and family!